Maurice Cummins (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

These provide a mix of rehabilitation and transitional care for patients who require assisted convalescent care before returning home or entering long-term care. Additional funding of €18 million was provided in July for a winter initiative that will include the provision of approximately 300 additional hospital beds in November and December this month and next month. The first of these are being opened. For example, the Leben building in the University of Limerick opened yesterday. A further 137 beds, which were closed for refurbishment for infection-control purposes in 2015, are to be reopened by the end of this month. Some 34 have already been reopened.

The director general of the Health Service Executive, who is co-chairing the emergency department task force implementation group from now until March 2016, has taken the decision to take over this himself to ensure all relevant parts of the health services, including acute and social and primary care services, are optimising resources to deal with the challenges outlined by several Members. The task force held its most recent meeting yesterday. It reviewed progress on the implementation recommendations of the task force action plan. As I stated, significant progress has been made over recent months. Admittedly, there are problems, but everything possible is being done by the Minister to address them.

I am not accepting the amendment to the Order of Business but I will ask the Minister for Health, Deputy Varadkar, to come to the House soon to address the issue of accident and emergency services.